Welcome to the Cafe du Watchog, also called RPGen. We're a sandbox style Pokemon site with a focus on everyday life in the Pokemon world. Trainers, Pokemon, criminals, cosmic forces, and normal citizens are all welcome to join in the fun. Kick back and enjoy a cup of coffee with us!

Commando Man

Ah, Black City. Ultra Megagigaindianapolis before it was cool and less railroady. Today it has a visitor that fits right in. A giant, hulking black crystal waiting in line and practically creeping everyone out in a 80 meter radius by existing. Necrozma idly stares forward, letting its arms hang as he wants the new Digimon game and he wants it now. He idly waits for the line to move, floating forward ever so slightly when it moves.

It's time. You knew it was coming. We're here at last. We're here and we're doing it. The only thing I know is how shit ends, not how the game progresses. Here we fucking go.

Scene opens up the same as S/M. I still get emotional every time I hear this theme. I waited so long for it. But it's still pretty much the same--wait no, there's a Cutiefly. There's a cool undersea background for character selection. We're gonna go with Helena. Like a Trop Kick to the dead.Lillie chase scene is the exact same except for the URS. The new title card is much more colorful. So far, maybe it's a more colorful start.

Helena has had a bad day among the fucking boxes. Hey look, a Nintendo Switch. This time you wake your dumb self up. Get your stuff, get dressed, gonna explore the house a bit and get new info. God these clothes are awful. You can't go into the garage. There's no bathroom. Check and check on that not being in the game. House looks nicer with flowers.

a yongoos attacks us!!

The starts appear to drive it off! All three of them drive ot off an Kukui comes to smite our faces. Helena is a happy girl who will be going on her adventure!

>'I was scared spitless!'

whoa OK chill

hahaha ok great this is gonna suck

<_Charon_> Found out the real Necrozma<Holt> oh bab<_Charon_> By the intro alone :T<Holt> y<Holt> ...wat<_Charon_> [LINK REMOVED FOR SPOILER]<_Charon_> See that [SPOILER]<_Charon_> That's him<Holt> not much for subtlety I guess.<_Charon_> Yeah it's like<_Charon_> WTF<Holt> HEY GUYS, LOOK. NECROZMA IS HERE. BUY OUR GAME PLEASE. 40 BUCKS BEFORE TAX!

After restarting the entire game and doing all that again, we get a Female Litten! How nice me homies! The new Battle theme is actually pretty fucking sweet really. Much more hotblooded and lively. Oh hi, Hau. Hau chooses the starter weak to you. Because. /flat

If you lose to him, you're losing on purpose. Click Ember and tell him to fuck off.

Iki Town is the same. There's more greenery on Mahalo Trail. The shadowwork is absolutely masterful. Yoo, what?

The Spearow hunt for your blood now! Damn! The rest of the scene plays out as normal.

Everything is still normal. You already get the starter earlier so you skip stuff.

After punching some kids and getting a rabbit and a rat, we see a Rockruff! This Rockruff follows you and you can do cute stuff with it. Hmm. I WONDER WHY THIS IS HERE. HOW. STRAAAANGE

The URS are up at the festival gates. Zossie likes fun, and wants to go join in. Dulse is tsundere to fun and talks about The Blinding Onelyne are you thereand how it's so black and enfeebled. They're a good team at least. I wonder why and if I should call the co

So the festival is WOW SHIT ALOLAN EXEGGUTOR IS TALL and we meet Hau. The festival theme is a bit touched up because now it includes the Alolan theme. Anyhoo, let's kick Hau in the face again. After Hau goes down the same as usual, we get to partake in the island challenge. Here we go. This is where it gets good. We gome home, and Dulse and Zossie have some words to say.

Basically, they want to control The Blinding Onelyne for god's sake pleasewakeuuuuuuUuuuUUuuUUUUUUUUUUUUU

"A year later in the year 2014, we decided to release the new iOS8. Well it turned out 4chan had also been planning to release a new feature. Apple Wave. They made claims that even MORE advanced algorithms that allowed the phone to be charged simply by popping it in the microwave. People really did this, by the way. And the news picked up on it too. Now it's hard to know for sure which of these tweets are real or hoaxes. And some of the news reports claimed that no one actually tried this at all. Hoever these pitiable cries on the Apple forums say otherwise. Now the next campaign only started a few days later. We decided to use an aluminum chassis. It was cheaper, lighter, but yes, you could bend the hell out of it. So #BendGate was born. A few companies even got in on the same stupid joke. We wanted you to prevent damage by being more careful with your phones. But instead, 4chan was there to make yet another marketing campaign. They decided Bend wasn't a bug, it was a feature that encourage users to bend the phone until their screen popped right out. And you did. The next two years passed without much happening. But then in 2016 we released the new iPhone 7. And courageously, it featured no headphone jack. But one Youtuber, TechRax, decided to tell people otherwise. And apparently, all you had to do, was drill for it. Article after article about people drilling into their phones. But we're just scratching the thin veneer of dumbassery. There was a bug that bricked your phone if you set the date to January 1st, 1970. So some idiot made a campaign there too. Big lines at the genius bar that week. But there's one last thing. We put a tiny seam in the side of your iphone 6. So that it pulled out your hair every time you put the phone up to your face. I made that design decision. I thought it was funny. And all of this brings us to today and your new iPhone. This is it. This is what you get. No more nice things. You can drown it. You can bend it. You can microwave it. Does it work? NO. But it's what you deserve." - Internet Historian

Games are like a puzzle. OK, some games ARE puzzles. Whatever, the point is... You need to have all the pieces fit. The more pieces that fit, the better the game is. Length, gameplay, story, sound, graphics, you get the picture. Sun/moon, I would say, are unfinished. But you don't need ME to tell you that, because GAMEFREAK told everyone that. So imagine my surprise when Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon were announced and that they were a 'retelling'. Now, I'm a simple man. I usually am very neutral about GameFreak sequel decisions. But this was the straw that just said 'No, I'm getting super angry now'. An incomplete beta was released to us for the grand total of 40$ each. Do you know how much that is these days when you struggle to pay rent?

So naturally, this is what we're going to do. I'll try my damndest to look at this game objectively, but I know, I KNOW a certain blonde haired character will have me devolving into a fucking screaming mess. Many, many parts of Sun/Moon are going to have me bitter, and at the end, I'm going to explain my pieces and why I'm right and YOU'RE NOT. With this out of the way, let's get started and lay down ground rules.

-No using Pokemon I used in the other games I reviewed or even my playthrough of Sun-This means no Bewear (Debating on changing it just for this one)-No legendaries-No Z-Moves except unique ones-Most money must immediately go to good outfits (4/5ths)-No avoiding trainer battles-No EXP share-Name Mombat something else because fuck you-3DS theme at all times must be set to Team Skull during the playthrough-Buy the Skull Tee-Every Pokemon must be F E M A L E O N L Y or described as female-Z-Move Lusamine's final Pokemon and make that bitch eat her hair

Boy isn't that a welcome image. OK. I've been siting n this for about 3 to 4 months now. I've had a lot of time to think now. I've had a lot of time to decide what's good and what's bad. But I'm not gonna type out big huge paragraphs. No. I'm gonna state the facts. I'm gonna be concise. I can barely keep my eyes open and I dread writing this. Maybe it'll explain why I don't come around here much no more.

Why Both Kalos and Alola Fucking Suck

That's right. After sucking Alola's cock like a fucking 5$ prostitute, I realized that most of what should be in Alola simply is FUCKING NOT. You know what? Fuck it. Let's get mad one last time. I'm fed up and I can't take it anymore. Alola had the potential to be the best launch games ever made. Everything was there. 2 years of development time. An improved engine with full 3D movement. And they fucking killed it with just big fuckups, goddamnit. IT WAS SO FUCKING CLOSE. ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS TAKE WHAT FUCKING WORKED FROM GEN VI AND PUT IT IN THE GODDAMN GEN VII GAMES.

Both of them feel like halves of one whole fucking game. The signs are all there. The crappy sequel hook. The fucking lesser amount of Pokemon totals up to 154 with Alola or some stupid shit, I don't know. It is inhuman to do this. There is absofuckinglutely no excuse for such incomplete piles of fucking code to be like this. I don't know if we're getting a Stars. What the fuck can it offer me now? New Pokemon? Not likely at all. New forms? Wow, Necrozma gets a new form! WATCH IT BE FUCKING USELESS BULLSHIT. This fucking Disneyland copout bullshit just proves they don't even know what made Join Avenue work. What fucking halfbreed cocksucker thought it was even a good idea to have this replace the PSS? You know, I want to apologize to Kalos. They had the perfect system for trading, battling, anything. And they threw it away like utter trash.

Everyone. Why should I give a damn about continuing to play the games? Why should you? There is no reason. There is no post game in any of them. There's nothing. Literal fucking nothing for both games. It's been over 20 fucking years now, and the series hasn't evolved. Nothing can evolve. The only way to evolve it is to do a total reboot to the mechanics, and we all know we aren't getting that. It's a dead end. For a series about evolving and friendship, it's been the same result for over 20 fucking years! You pick 4 ideal moves and run all the same shit online! It's staler than goddamn Melee! There's no future here! Everything about this entire system is fucked. FUCKED.

So it's with a tired soul and a broken heart, that I'm announcing I'm going to take a long, long break from a game series that taught me how to read. I'm going to move on. I'm going to Monster Hunter and Shin Megami Tensei. They know how to improve a system that's arguably better than Pokemon's. And even if its shit to play, it's not fucking Pokemon. It's not something that's suffocated me with all its poor design decisions. I know this hardly warrants a thread. But I'm done. I don't care anymore.

A return to X/Y? What am, a crazy man? No. I've wanted to do this for a game for a while now. I want to put my game design degree to good use. (-sign that says LAUGH appears over your head-) In exchange, I can think of no better game to do it for than one of the most critically divisive games I have ever played. Rule number 1. No getting angry. This is not to base my own hatred or opinions on X/Y, but to look at it from a completely neutral standpoint. If I don't, I don't feel like this game can fade from my memory properly. With that out of the way, I'm going to take everything chunk by chunk. You'll see the layout below, and how I format it. Let's get started.

-VANIVILLE, ROUTE 1, AQUACORDE-

The intro movie to X/Y feels relatively underwhelming. The Kalos starters are the starts, but they seem to get replaced momentarily by the Megas, which from a marketing standpoint makes sense. However, there's nothing in X/Y's intro movie that makes me hyped about the world of Kalos itself. It shows no important or crucial moments as a clencher, and doesn't assert that this region has it's own brand of character. It is regrettable, but the battle scenes look very outdated compared to Sun/Moon now.

The intro with Sycamore is a lot better. From the start, you can see a parallel to a Pokeball being compared to a sun or a moon (you get the hint there?) and Sycamore is in full 3D modeling instead of the chibi style he has ingame. It is fairly interesting to see him be so passionate about his job, and the picture he uses to scroll across the screen detailing various mons doing various things is nothing short of exemplary and really highlights Kalos's culture. Sycamore himself seems like he could be a fun and interesting sort with how he handles himself, with his usage of the French language.

Sadly, it seems like the rest of the introduction is uneventful en masse. It's hard to describe, but I think the graphical style really doesn't flatter the intro itself very well. Your character wakes up, 3DS still in their hand which I thought was a lovely touch. They have pajamas on, and you change out of them to the fairly odd clothes you get. It doesn't exactly seem fashionable to wear such things, but I'm no fashion expert either. All the hairstyles given to you are ones that fit with hats. It's quite jarring to not see much of a hairstyle on underneath, and feels a bit cheapened.

Here we meet Serena and Calem for the first time. Rather than talk about their characters in full, we are only doing the dialogue immersion here because this is your first honest look at Kalos. Now, if we were to base everything on its own merits, Vaniville Town is the second-best looking starter town yet, the first going to Aspertia City in B/W2. I won't compare the two just yet. From a design standpoint, it looks painfully obvious that the grid-based movement really does hamper a lot of regions in general. Nothing about Vaniville despite its appearance honestly sticks out to me. It's a very limited town in what you really have to offer yourself with in terms of overall quality.

Following the two leaving, I decide to take a closer look at Calem's house. I notice that they have no battle trophies or anything to their name, or even any pictures. This is very plain, honestly almost too plain for my tastes if the backstory of Calem's is to be believed about his parents being veteran trainers who have really took battling pretty hard. While I am excited the interior design has stepped up in terms of quality, this kind of character touching should not be ignored. Case in point about the 8 directional movement, there seems to be a garage door, but no way to actually go inside it with no proper curving, driveway, or any path of the sort.

Route 1...makes me frown. From a designer standpoint, this not only feels cheap and disappointing, but it also feels limiting and pointless in its overall design theory compared to every other Route 1 or a subsidiary of such being where most of your experiences happening in every other game. I see only the sky and trees, and no flying overhead Pokemon. Not even a change at the time of day works for this... Ah, but I do see full, 3D, non-tiled hills on closer inspection. Yes, I believe that's significant. They DID have the power to render 3D models in a total space, but it just didn't matter to them. Very negative impact on the game as a whole in retrospection with Sun & Moon on the horizon. While it is a bit pointless, how well does it feel overall? Considering I can cross it in 4 seconds and there's nothing of note to see on it, or experience as a player, I would likely feel let down or treat it as comedic. One point I should be judging in neutrality is the landscape with the 3D feature turned on. It's only restricted to battles, however. I think that is quite telling somewhat that the 3D aspect is a complete negative to Pokemon and other games as a whole. But I'm digressing from the main point.

Ah, yes. The starters. This scene is crucial, perhaps almost overly crucial to having this succeed in the immersion department. We are introduced to Tierno and Trevor. They don't really feel interesting to begin with. For instance, we never see their families unless you really look for them, and I think Tierno's simply don't exist outright. Bad call, Cheren and Bianca had families in B/W1 that talked to them and had their own personalities. Here, they are background notes. We get our starter. This playthrough, I won't be using any of them indepth in a competitive standpoint because anyone can do a case study on them and see Greninja was the more favored. It's bad design in and of itself to not make the starters all useful in some way, but to this extent is baffling, and a testament to how mismatched and controversial GameFreak is at marketing. (I.E. The Delta Episode being spoiled, Zoroark's first appearance, and most of all, Lysandre's appearance) I think this was supposed to be an attempt to change the formula of going to a lab to get your Pokedex, but this just seems overly lazy and an excuse to not write more than they have to for Sycamore's character in general. For this run, I have chosen Froakie. It is Modest, but Male. It's all right, this is perfect.

So Sycamore gives us a letter by proxy from Tierno. We have to give this letter to our mother, at which point she'll allow us to go on our journey. I think this is a bit of backtracking, given we will never come back to Vaniville or Aquacorde unless we absolutely have to. Like what Gordy said, Vaniville and Aquacorde should have been combined into one overly large town, which would have made it a beautiful way to show off Kalos's beauty and overall size. Not only would this have been a perfect way to start the game, but it would have also given Kalos a much needed personality in its introduction. It's a shame, because these two are the most well-designed towns in the game next to Laverre.

So the game finally sets out from here, which means we will need a cutaway break. See you next time for the actual progression and analytical outlook on the routes with actual Pokemon. I hope you enjoyed so far.